(upbeat music)
(speaking in foreign language)
- Good morning, hello everyone.
My name is Victoria, and I'm coming to you
live from Zalaegerszeg, Hungary.
Welcome to my Instagram takeover for ITA.
A little bit about me,
I am 25 years old, and I got my TEFL certificate last fall,
and I came here last fall.
So it was a little whirlwind for me finding my job here.
I am from Massachusetts, shout out to Worcester,
and I got my bachelor's degree in journalism,
and then when I finished college, I said what's next?
Moving abroad is what's next.
So I hope you enjoy my day in the life
of living and teaching in Zalaegerszeg.
First of all, you're probably wondering
where is Zalaegerszeg?
Good question because I wondered the same thing.
Zalaegerszeg is in Western Hungary,
it is very close to the Austrian and Slovenian border.
I actually live closer to Vienna than I do to Budapest.
But unfortunately, because of the pandemic
I haven't been able to go.
But I can see Austria, when I go up into the hills
I can see the Austrian Alps so I feel like I'm there.
I really like living here.
I found my job through
the Central European Teaching Program,
CETP, I can talk a lot about that if anyone is interested.
The program finds you your job,
the program picks you up at the airport,
and they bring you to your apartment.
They find you your apartment.
They get you your visa.
And so joining, finding out about CETP was huge for me
because I was nervous to do all of those thing.
Which by the way,
let me just drop a little question box over here
so that you can ask me any questions throughout the day
that you have about Zalaegerszeg, teaching in Hungary,
CETP, a day in the life living in central Europe, whatever.
I plan to show you a little bit around my apartment
after I finished my coffee.
Unfortunately, just yesterday we started
a stricter lockdown so my school is closed.
We're doing online learning right now,
and all businesses are closed except grocery stores.
But I still plan on taking you out on a little walk,
I'll even walk you to my school so you get an idea,
I'll walk you around town.
I still plan to have a fun day with you all,
so yeah, drop me your questions,
let me know what you wanna see and I will show you.
Okay, so coffee is done, it's 7:15,
I am ready to start my day.
So let me show you around my little apartment.
Before I start I want to let you know
my school pays for my apartment and pays for my utilities,
so I don't pay for anything here
except for my phone bill for unlimited data.
I don't have wifi, and I highly recommend you get wifi,
because my little laptop right here is eight years old
and she bites the dust a lot without wifi.
So when you go to your school,
I would suggest you ask for wifi
if you don't already have it.
Anyways, okay, let's get into it.
So this is my breakfast, and lunch, and dinner table.
I also watch TV from it, I do work,
I eat my multivitamins.
Those are my presents from my students,
those flowers for International Women's Day.
So cute.
It's a nice little couch.
Okay, I'm gonna show you like this, I think this is easier.
So yeah, here's my everything space.
Work, and eating, and all that jazz.
This is my school stuff, and my workout area.
Okay, this is my bed.
I live in a studio so everything is right here.
My beautiful tapestry.
I have tons of storage space.
There's my luggage, and my bags
that I put little command hooks on.
This is my makeup doing area, hello.
(Victoria laughing)
Let's go into the bathroom.
Okay, so this is a pretty standard Hungarian style bathroom.
There is no shower curtain, as you can see, that's normal.
My shower head is in the middle, I have learned to adapt.
There is a washer machine right here,
I think I have a pretty nice washer.
It's small, but it does the job pretty well.
And then yeah, toilet, sink.
This is my entry area.
Okay and what I was gonna say
is there's tons of storage space in here.
So most of my big coats,
and my other luggage are all in there.
Okay, and here is my kitchen.
This is my fridge,
I'm pretty sure that's standard size here.
My microwave, my sink.
I've got my cupboards, my stove,
it's an electric stove.
This is my favorite thing that I own, my electric kettle.
And then this is my backsplash.
Ha ha ha, get the joke?
(Victoria laughing)
I tried to make Hungarian coffee
with this little coffee maker.
Well, I took it apart 'cause I don't use it,
and it exploded, and went everywhere, everywhere.
So a little piece of advice before you use one of these,
Google how to.
I now make regular coffee.
Okay, and that is my apartment.
I think it is perfect size.
It has everything I need,
and I've never once complained about it.
Okay, so I just ate breakfast,
worked out in my apartment, showered, got ready, whatever.
Now I am back, it's 9:20 ish.
Usually by now on Tuesdays
I will have already left for school.
I live about a 30 minute walk from school.
I can take the bus and it would be shorter,
and it's very cheap, it's like a dollar a ride.
But I prefer to walk
because I like to get my steps in every day.
I work, I have 20 classes every single week,
grades one through eight,
and they're all over the spectrum
for English knowledgeability.
So obviously my first, second, third,
and fourth graders are lower,
but I also have some fifth and sixth graders
who are much lower in their English knowledge,
so it really depends on the class.
I do not have a curriculum.
So I just, I'm kinda known as the fun class,
that's what my class is.
It's a speaking class.
So all of my classes are revolve around games,
speaking, having fun, no stress.
I don't give any homework out.
At first though, this was super stressful for me.
I was so nervous to have to come up
lesson plans and curriculums from scratch,
especially for my younger kids who don't know that much.
But honestly it takes a month or two of figuring it out
and now honestly, I kinda love it,
there's not as much pressure,
and if I find a really fun game online
and I can bring it to the classroom,
usually my kids love it.
So that's what my classes look like.
I don't have to be at school
until 15 minutes before my classes all start,
so on Mondays and Tuesdays I don't have class until 9:50,
so I don't have to be there till 9:40.
And if I have breaks
then I'm in the teacher's room doing work, whatever,
yes, that's all.
Oh, and before I get to your questions,
because there's a ton of questions about CETP
and I will definitely answer those,
my experience is very different from everyone else's.
Every single person has their own unique experience here.
One of my friends who lives in this town and teaches,
she follows a curriculum,
and she uses the books to teach her lessons.
My other friend who lives two hours away from me
in another town, she has a different setup,
and she sees some of her students multiple times a week,
whereas I only see my students once a week.
So it totally depends on where you live,
and you can always ask those questions
before when you're interviewing with the schools.
What does my day look like?
What will my job look like?
And I think that's a good question to ask anyways.
Okay, so I don't know how my question box
got put in upside down, but you figured it out.
So first question, did I choose where I wanted to live?
Kind of.
I knew that I wanted to live in a city, and so I put that.
And I also applied very late
so I didn't have as many options.
But you do have somewhat of a choice.
You can say, no, I don't wanna teach here.
And when I was applying,
I was given a few different options to choose from.
I do know it's a lot harder to get placed in Budapest,
especially for new teachers, so keep your options open.
If you know that you would like to be in a city
where there might be other English speakers,
that's an important thing to note.
If you don't mind living in a town
where the other English speakers
might just be the people who work at your school,
then that's something to note.
And then this is the giant grocery store in my town.
We have a lot of grocery stores,
but this is the biggest one.
As you can tell, it's huge.
You can really find anything you want there.
Anything except for like brunch, or an onion powder.
Those are the two things I can't find anywhere.
But yeah, this is the main road in Zalaegerszeg.
And a beautiful church.
I chose the onion bread, (speaking in Hungarian).
So yeah, this is it.
Okay, so this is the school I work at.
Again, it takes me 25, 30 minutes to get here every day.
I actually found out on Thursday
that we would be moving to online learning,
so I took some videos on Friday
just to show you what it looks like inside of my school,
and some of my students saying hi,
so I'll show you those right now.
Let's go back in time.
Okay, so this is my school.
(door opening)
Hi.
- [Man] Good morning.
- [Victoria] Good morning.
Okay, we have to get our temperatures taken.
(machine beeping)
If it works.
Oh, maybe over here.
(machine beeping)
Good.
And then we have to get some hand sanitizer.
This is the gym right now.
They're building a new gym.
This is the snack shop where you can get snacks.
The students can.
Let's show you, this is the lunch room.
Obviously no one's here right now, yes.
Okay, this is going to be the teacher's room.
Where all of the teachers have our desks.
You can print things over at the printer.
This is my station, so not much going on.
There's a coffee machine over there and a fridge.
That's it in here.
Hello.
- [All] Hello.
- Say good morning.
(kids talking)
Hello.
This is second grade.
(Victoria laughing)
Okay good.
(kids yelling)
Okay, I hope you liked that little video.
That's all I have for inside of school, unfortunately.
But now I'm walking back home,
I'm in front of the pharmacy right now.
You have to get all of your medicine at the pharmacy,
even Advil and ibuprofen.
And then this is kind of the downtown area.
So the further down we go, we'll go to the post office
and the Zalaegerszeg sign.
I can show you that if you want.
The McDonald's in town.
So yeah, this is the downtown.
Okay, this is the city center.
There's shops, there's a little fountain.
I think that van, it sells mulled wine,
I think it might be open, I'll have to investigate.
There are shops, apartments.
Tons of stuff.
This is where the Christmas tree was.
So yeah, this is where it all happens, I guess.
Okay, so I just had lunch.
I did a little lesson planning
and responding to some of my students through email.
And I think the only thing I haven't really talked about
yet is the cost, and money, and expenses breakdown,
so I'll do that now.
First thing to know is that I can't travel
right now, anywhere.
The borders have been closed since before I arrived.
Now we can't go anywhere in Hungary,
so I'm not really spending as much money
as I think I would have been spending
if it wasn't a pandemic.
Also, should I be traveling at any point soon,
I did wanna say that travel is very cheap here.
When I went to Budapest in October
when things were still open, I think I paid $8 each way.
And when I went to visit my friend it was about the same.
So travel is cheap and easy here.
But without further ado let me give you
a little price breakdown,
and then I'll go over it a little more.
Okay, so as you can see from my last graphic
my salary is pretty low, it's $633 a month.
But cost of living is also really low.
I'm going to be totally honest though,
and say I do have massive student loans back home
so I did have to save up in order to come here.
It was worth it for me
because I really wanted to live and work in Europe,
and I know in a lot of countries in Europe
you have to be able to speak the language to work there.
And in Hungary I will tell you that is not the case.
I barely know any Hungarian,
I'm learning a little bit, but just enough to be respectful.
So I weighed my pros and cons and I said, you know what?
I will save money for a year, for two years,
whatever so that I can come here and not worry about it.
With that being said, though,
if you do to make more money while you're living here
there's plenty of opportunities to tutor students,
and you could always work for an online website too
to do some teaching there.
So there are more options
than just your salary to make money.
So if anyone's wondering,
I buy something at the bakery every week
as a little present to myself.
I like to try different pastries.
I don't Google translate what they are,
I figure it out when I eat it.
This is what I bought today.
It's obviously chocolate something.
I'm really excited.
But let me just tell you
that the things here that I absolutely love
are the bread, the food, and the wine.
Those things, they're parts of my,
they're a part of my favorite things in Hungary.
And you're looking at some of it right now.
So I only had an interview with CETP
to make sure I was fit for the program,
and to see if I had any questions.
It was very informal,
so it's not something you should sweat at all.
So again, since I applied very late,
I knew that the odds that I was placed
in Budapest was very low.
And so I knew I needed to keep my options open
to smaller cities around Hungary.
I was just gonna say
that there's a lot more to Hungary than just Budapest,
so I'm sure a lot of people would love to be placed there
but there's not as many options
as there probably are people.
And also something that is different about CETP
than say the EPIK program in Korea is that you can say
no I don't wanna be put in this city
or town where there is a need.
You can pass up offers
until you find one that really suits you.
So just keep that in mind
that you don't just get plopped somewhere
and have to work there.
You can kinda have more of a deciding factor in this.
And also, I dunno why my question boxes
keep being upside down,
we're just gonna roll with it, okay.
So I teach 20 classes per week,
which means I work 20 hours in the classroom.
or, well the classes are 45 minutes, so a little less.
And then the other times I can either be at home,
or I can be in the teacher's room doing prep.
So my days are different every single day.
On Monday I only teach two classes,
on Tuesday and Thursday I teach four.
On Wednesday and Friday I teach five,
so it totally depends on the day.
On Mondays I'm only at school
from 9:40 until one o'clock,
and on Wednesdays I'm there from 7:45 until 2:40.
So it totally depends on the day,
and I actually really like that,
I like how it's different every day.
So yes, CETP is only in Hungary,
and you can somewhat choose where you go.
They give you options, and you can choose between them.
At least, that's what happened with me.
Okay, yeah valid.
It has definitely been lonely
moving here during a pandemic, for sure.
But my coworkers are all amazing,
I feel like I won the lottery with my coworkers,
so I feel really blessed and they are all my friends.
There are, other than me,
three native English speakers in my town.
So we all bonded together because all of us
native English speakers always bond together,
and that has been really nice for me.
No one at my school is a native English speaker,
so all of them are Hungarian.
But there are a lot of English teachers
so I'm able to talk to a good amount of people
when I want to.
Because restaurants and bars have been closed
the past four and a half, four months,
I haven't really been able to make as many friends
as I think I had hoped to make,
'cause I'm kind of an extrovert,
but I definitely do have friends,
and I have a support system here.
Okay everyone, it's that time.
Quarantine and lockdown has turned me
into an absolute grandma.
I'm in my pajamas already,
my lesson planning juice is poured,
and I'm about to start a movie.
So that's it for me on my ITA takeover.
If you have any other questions about Hungary,
living abroad, maybe it's your first time
doing anything like this and you wanna ask any questions,
I'll add my username and you can definitely message me.
I vlog almost every day about my life here.
I post videos of me trying different pastries,
and going places.
So if you wanna see anything else
about life here in Hungary, give me a follow.
I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Bye.
(upbeat music)